Iraq war left US no stronger in Middle East, experts say

AFP, WASHINGTON

Mon, Mar 18, 2013 - Page 7

The US-led invasion of Iraq overthrew a dictator, but 10 years on the war is seen to have destabilized the Middle East, exposed the limits of military power and left the US no stronger than before.

With US forces having withdrawn after the deaths of almost 4,500 coalition troops and an estimated US$1 trillion outlay, there is little soul-searching in Washington today about a war that has faded from public consciousness.

Ten years after the “shock and awe” that launched Operation Iraqi Freedom, removing former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power, most analysts and diplomats agree the Iraq war did nothing to improve the US’ position in the Middle East.

“Regardless of whether genuine democracy is viable or even sustainable, the Iraq war did not serve any strategic net gain for the United States,” said Ramzy Mardini, a fellow at the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies in Beirut, Lebanon.

On the contrary, “misplaced certainty” about the ability of US military power to do the job and a lack of regard to Saddam’s role as an Arab counterbalance to Iran have harmed US interests, he said.

“The fall of Saddam didn’t just create a power vacuum in Baghdad, it created a power vacuum in the region, which plunged neighboring states into an intense environment of security competition” that continues today, Mardini added.

Such miscalculations were not confined to the administration of former US president George W. Bush, said Christopher Hill, a veteran of the peace settlement in Bosnia, who arrived in Baghdad in 2009 as the US ambassador.

Hill, now dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, Colorado, said that the “complete disconnect between Washington” and people such as himself “on the ground” continued until the end.

US President Barack Obama used his opposition to the war to distinguish himself from former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton when seeking the Democratic nomination in 2008. As president, he ended US military involvement on Bush’s December 2011 timeline.

“America did not show enough strategic patience with politics in Iraq,” Hill said, recalling the months he spent trying to ensure a government was formed after elections in 2010 that served Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish interests.

Instead, US policy continued to be largely guided by military considerations, Hill said, adding that General David Petraeus’ recent fall from grace has prompted many people, “including me,” to take “a more honest look” at Iraq.

Petraeus became the face of the “surge,” a mix of troop reinforcements and counterinsurgency tactics which in 2007 was credited — along with Sunni tribes turning against al-Qaeda and siding with the US military — with halting the worst of Iraq’s bloody sectarian conflict.

“There were people in Washington more interested in consolidating gains made in counterinsurgency warfare than in understanding the essential politics of the country,” Hill said.

As a result, the Iraq that Washington left behind had a “democratic standard that we would not sign off on,” and the “great game for Iraq” is under way among its neighbors, Hill added.

Obama’s desire for a smooth military exit perhaps reflects the tortured place the conflict occupies in the US psyche.

“All rhetoric aside, we invaded a country by mistake,” said James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corporation, a Washington think tank. “For all Saddam’s malign intent, he had effectively been disarmed already. The sanctions had worked.”

With no nuclear weapons or significant chemical weapons dumps ever found, the second Bush administration refocused on establishing a pro-Western state in occupied Iraq, aiming to gain a regional ally.

Dobbins, who has held US Department of State and White House posts, said Americans should not fool themselves about the outcome.

“The democracy agenda became the last possible excuse for invading Iraq. It’s not an ally. It’s not an enemy either,” he said.